October 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

Fixing the Vote
by R. A. Hettinga 03 Oct '04

03 Oct '04

<http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=00018DD5-73E7-1151-B57F834…> Scientific American Fixing the Vote September 17, 2004 Fixing the Vote Electronic voting machines promise to make elections more accurate than ever before, but only if certain problems--with the machines and the wider electoral process--are rectified By Ted Selker Voting may seem like a simple activity--cast ballots, then count them. Complexity arises, however, because voters must be registered and votes must be recorded in secrecy, transferred securely and counted accurately. We vote rarely, so the procedure never becomes a well-practiced routine. One race between two candidates is easy. Half a dozen races, each between several candidates, and ballot measures besides--that's harder. This complex process is so vital to our democracy that problems with it are as noteworthy as engineering faults in a nuclear power plant. Votes can be lost at every stage of the process. The infamous 2000 U.S. presidential election dramatized some very basic, yet systemic, flaws concerning who got to vote and how the votes were counted. An estimated four million to six million ballots were not counted or were prevented from being cast at all--well over 2 percent of the 150 million registered voters. This is a shockingly large number considering that the decision of which candidate would assume the most powerful office in the world came to rest on 537 ballots in Florida. Three simple problems were to blame for these losses. The first, which made up the largest contribution, was from registration database errors that prevented 1.5 million to three million votes; this problem was exemplified by 80,000 names taken off the Florida lists because of a poorly designed computer algorithm. Second, a further 1.5 million to two million votes were uncountable because of equipment glitches, mostly bad ballot design. For example, the butterfly ballot of Palm Beach County confused many into voting for an unintended candidate and also contributed to another appalling outcome: 19,235 people, or 4 percent of voters, selected more than one presidential candidate. Equipment problems such as clogged punch holes resulted in an additional 682 dimpled ballots that were not counted there. Finally, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, about one million registered voters reported that polling-place difficulties such as long lines prevented them from casting a vote. Thus, registration and polling-place troubles accounted for about two thirds of the documentable lost votes in 2000. The remaining one third were technology-related, most notably ballot design and mechanical failures. In the aftermath of the 2000 election, officials across the country, at both the federal and local levels, have scrambled to abandon old approaches, such as lever machines and punch cards, in favor of newer methods. Many are turning to electronic voting machines. Although these machines offer many advantages, we must make sure that these new systems simplify the election process, reduce errors and eliminate fraud. Some countries have introduced electronic systems with great success. Brazil started testing electronic voting machines in the mid-1990s and since 2000 has been using one type of machine across its vast pool of 106 million voters. It has multiple organizations responsible for different aspects of voting equipment development as part of the safeguards. It also introduced the machines in carefully controlled stages--with 40,000 voters in 1996 (7 percent of whom failed to record their votes electronically) and 150,000 in 1998 (2 percent failure). Improvements based on those experiments reduced the failure rate to an estimated 0.2 percent in 2000. Voting Technology Voting systems have a long history of advancing with technology. In ancient Greece, Egypt and Rome, marks were made for candidates on pieces of discarded pottery called ostraca. Paper superseded pottery in the hand-counted paper ballot, which is still used by 1.3 percent of U.S. voters. Other modern technologies are lever machines, punch cards and mark-sense ballots (where each candidate's name is next to an empty oval or other shape that must be marked correctly to indicate the selection, and a scanner counts the votes automatically). The table on pages 94 and 95 summarizes the benefits and drawbacks of each of these methods and suggests ways to improve them. A lengthier discussion of nonelectronic systems is at www.sciam. com/ontheweb. Electronic voting machines have been around for 135 years--Thomas Edison patented one in 1869. Elections started testing electronic voting machines in the 1970s, when displaying and recording a ballot directly into a computer file became economical. At first, many were mixed-media machines, using paper to present the selections and buttons to record the votes. Officials had to carefully align the paper with the buttons and indicator lights. Electronic voting machines that use such paper overlays are still on the market. More modern direct record electronic (DRE) voting machines present the ballot and feedback information on an electronic display, which may be combined with audio. Such machines have many advantages: they can stop a voter from choosing too many candidates (called overvoting), and they can warn if no candidate is picked on a race (undervoting). For instance, when Georgia changed over to DREs in 2002, residuals (the total of overvotes and undervotes combined) were reduced from among the worst in the nation at 3.2 percent on the top race in 2000 to 0.9 percent in 2002. So-called ballotless voting allows the machines to eliminate tampering with physical ballots during handling or counting. (Lever machines, dating back to 1892, share many of those features.) Yet the birthing of DRE voting equipment in the U.S. has not been easy. The voting machine industry is fragmented, with numerous companies pursuing a variety of products and without a mature body of industry-wide standards in place. Deciding what is a good voting machine is still being discussed by various advocacy organizations and groups such as the IEEE Project 1583 on voting equipment standards. Allegations of voting companies using money to influence testing and purchasing of equipment are not uncommon. Complicating matters, local jurisdictions across the country have different rules and approaches to testing and using voting equipment. Some counties, such as Los Angeles, are sophisticated enough that they commission voting machines built to their own specifications. Many other municipalities know so little about voting that they employ voting companies to run the election and report the results. Polling-place practices add further hazards of insecurity and potential malfunctions. I recall walking into the central election warehouse (where the voting machines are stored and the precinct vote tallies are combined) in Broward County, Florida, when it was being used for a recount in December 2002. The building's loading dock was opened to the outdoors for ventilation. The control center for tallying all the votes was a small computer room; the door to that room was ajar and no log was kept of personnel entering and leaving. Beyond external issues, DRE machines themselves have had technological shortcomings that have slowed their adoption. Voters have found their displays confusing or challenging to use. Software bugs and difficulties in setting up DREs have also presented problems. During the 2002 Broward County recount, I was allowed to try out machines from Electronic Systems and Services (ESS), one of the country's major election machine makers. The ESS machines had an excessive undervote because the "move to next race" button was too close to the "deposit my ballot" button. An audio ballot was so poorly designed it took about 45 minutes to vote. On machines made by the company Sequoia, people who chose a straight party vote and then tried to select that party's presidential candidate were unaware that they were deselecting their presidential choice. A massive 10 percent undervote was registered in one county using Sequoia machines in New Mexico. Examining the insides of new voting machines still reveals many physical security faults. For example, some machines have a lifetime electronic odometer that is supposed to read every vote that the machine makes. But the odometer is connected to the rest of the machine by a cable that a corrupt poll worker could unplug to circumvent it without breaking a seal. Source code for voting machines made by different companies, like most commercial software, is a trade secret. Election machine companies allow buyers to show the source code to experts under confidential terms. Unfortunately, the local election officials might not know how to find a qualified expert. And when they find one, will the voting companies be required to listen? For instance, in 1997 Iowa was considering a voting machine made by Global Election Systems, which was later bought out by Diebold. Computer scientist Douglas W. Jones of the University of Iowa pointed out security issues, and the state bought Sequoia machines instead. In February 2003 Diebold left its software on unsecured servers, and DRE critics posted Diebold's code on the Internet for everyone to see. The problems that Jones saw six years earlier had not been fixed. Any person with physical access to the machines and a moderate amount of computer knowledge could have hacked into them to produce any outcome desired. The best computer security available depends on sophisticated encryption and carefully designed protocols. Yet to know the system has not been compromised requires testing. DRE machines have not received the constant testing that they require. Security of today's voting machines is wholly dependent on election workers and the procedures that they follow. Because virtually all tallies, no matter what voting method is used, are now stored and transmitted in some electronic form, computer fraud is possible with all voting systems. The advent of DRE machines potentially allows such tampering to go unchecked from the point at which the voter attempts to cast a ballot. Schemes for altering ballots have always existed, but a computerized attack could have widespread effects were it waged on a large jurisdiction that uses one kind of software on one type of machine. Using a single system allows large jurisdictions to get organized and improve their results but must be accompanied by stringent controls. The successful reduction of residuals across all of Georgia, mentioned earlier, is a case in point. Thorough tests on the DREs at Kenisaw State University found many problems, which were resolved before the machines were put into use. This rigorous testing and careful introduction of the machines were central to the state's success. Electronic Fraud How can we find all the dangers created by bad software and prevent or correct them before they compromise an election? Reading source code exposes its quality and its use of security approaches and can reveal bugs. But the only completely reliable way to test software is by running it through all the possible situations that it might be faced with. In 1983 Ken Thompson, on receipt of the Association for Computing Machinery's Turing Award (the most prestigious award in computer science), gave a lecture entitled "Reflections on Trusting Trust." In it he showed the possibility of hazards such as "Easter eggs"--pieces of code that are not visible to a reader of the program. In a voting machine, such code would do nothing until election day, when it would change how votes were recorded. Such code could be loaded into a voting machine in many ways: in the voting software itself, in the tools that assemble the software (compiler, linker and loader), or in the tools the program depends on (database, operating system scheduler, memory management and graphical-user-interface controller). Tests must therefore be conducted to catch Easter eggs and bugs that occur only on election day. Many electronic voting machines have clocks in them that can be set forward to the day of the election to perform a test. But these clocks could be manipulated by officials to rerun an election and create bogus voting records, so a safer voting machine would not allow its clock to be set in the field. Such machines would need to be tested for Easter egg fraud on election day. In November 2003 in California a random selection of each electronic voting system was taken aside on the day of election, and careful parallel elections were conducted to show that the machines were completely accurate at recording votes. These tests demonstrated that the voting machines were working correctly. To prepare for a fraud-free voting day requires that every effort be made to create voting machines that do not harbor malicious code. The computer science research community is constantly debating the question of how to make provably secure software. Computer security experts have devised many approaches to keep computers reliable enough for other purposes, such as financial transactions. Financial software transfers billions of dollars every day, is extensively tested and holds up well under concerted attacks. The same security techniques can be applied to voting machines. Some researchers believe that the security precautions of "open source" (making the programs available for anyone to examine) and encryption techniques can help but not completely guard against Easter eggs. Guarding votes against being compromised has always required multiple human agents watching each other for mistakes or malice. The best future schemes might include computer agents that check one another and create internal audits to validate every step of the voting process. The Secure Architecture for Voting Electronically (SAVE) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a demonstration research project to explore such an approach. SAVE works by having several programs carry out the same tasks, but while using such different methods that each program would have to be breached separately to compromise the final result. The system knows to call foul when too many modules disagree. Audit Trails Some critics insist that the best way to ameliorate such attacks is by providing a separate human-readable paper ballot. This widely promoted scheme is the voter-verified paper ballot (VVPB) suggested by Rebecca Mercuri, then at Bryn Mawr College. The voting machine prints out a receipt, and the voter can look at it after voting and assure himself that at least the paper records his intention. The receipt remains behind a clear screen so no one can tamper with it during its inspection, and it is retained by the machine. If a dispute about the electronic count arises, a recount can be conducted using the printed receipts. (It is not a good idea for the voter to have a copy, because such receipts could encourage the selling of votes.) Although the VVPB looks quite appealing at first glance, a deeper inspection exposes some serious flaws. First, it is complicated for the voter. Elections in this country often have many races. Validating all the selections on a separate paper after the ballot has been filled out is not a simple task. Experience shows that even when confronted with a printout that tells voters in which race they have made a mistake, few are willing to go back and correct it. Anything that takes a voter's attention away from the immediate act of casting a ballot will reduce the chances of the person voting successfully. Every extra button, every extra step, every extra decision is a source of lost votes. The scheme is also complicated for the officials. If a voter claims fraud, what is the official to do? The voter claims she voted for Jane, but both the DRE screen and the receipt show a vote for John. Should they close the polling station? On top of this, the officials are not legally allowed to see an individual voter's ballot. VVPB addresses only a small part of the fraud problem. The paper trails themselves could be made part of a scheme for defrauding an election if a hacker tampers with the printing software. The paper can be manipulated in all the usual ways after the election. A better option would allow people to verify their selections with recorded audio feedback. An audio transcript on tape or a CD has an integrity that is harder to compromise than a collection of paper receipts. Most current electronic voting machines can be set up to speak the choices to the voter while he looks at the visual interface. The tape can be read by a computer or listened to by people. Because misreads of paper are a major difficulty with all counting machines today, the tape can be better verified than paper receipts. An audio receipt is also preferable to a paper receipt because it is hard to change or erase the audio verifications without such alterations being noticed (think about the 18-minute gap on the Watergate tapes). Also, a small number of cassette tapes or CDs are easier to store and transport than thousands of paper receipts. Other proposals for voter verification include recording the video image of the DRE and showing the ballot as it has been received by the central counting databases while the voter is in the booth. The advantage of these techniques is that they are passive--they do not require additional actions on the part of the voter. Here is how voting might go using a well-designed audio record. Imagine you are voting on a computer. You like Abby Roosevelt, Independent. You press the touch-screen button for your choice. The name is highlighted, and the vote button on one side is replaced with an unvote button on the other side. The tab on the screen for this race shows that a selection has been made. The earphones you are wearing tell you that you have voted for "Ben Jefferson" (and these words are recorded on a backup tape). Wait a minute! "Ben Jefferson"? You realize that you must have pressed the wrong button by mistake. You study the screen and see a prominent "cancel vote" button. You press it. "Vote for Ben Jefferson for president canceled," the computer intones onto a tape and into your ears. The screen returns to its prevote state, and this time you press more carefully and are rewarded with "Vote cast for Abby Roosevelt, Independent, for president." You go on to the Senate race. The features just described are designed to give feedback in ways you are most adept at understanding. People are good at noticing labels moving, tabs changing, and contrast and texture changes. We have trouble doing things accurately without such feedback. The audio verification comes right at a time when the user is performing the action. Perceptual tasks (seeing movement and hearing the audio) are easier to perform than cognitive ones (reading a paper receipt and remembering all the candidates one intended to vote for). A tape or CD recording is a permanent, independent transcript of your vote. These features are all implementable now as ballot improvements on current voting machines. Extra work would be needed to allow sight- or hearing-impaired people to verify multiple records of their ballot as well. Some researchers are studying alternatives to DREs, in the form of Internet voting or voting using familiar devices such as the phone. Since May 2002, England has been experimenting with a number of systems intended to increase turnout. These methods include mailing in optically readable paper ballots (absentee voting), using a standard phone call and the phone's keypad, using the instant-messaging facilities on cell phones and using interactive TV that is available in English homes. Swindon Borough, for example, included more than 100,000 voters in an experiment using the Internet and telephones. A 10-digit PIN was hand-delivered to voters' homes. This PIN was used in conjunction with a password the voters had been sent separately to authorize them to vote. No fraud was detected or reported. But the effort only improved turnout by 3 percentage points (from 28 to 31 percent). In contrast, introducing the option of absentee voting increased voter turnout by 15 percentage points--but with a downside: large-scale vote buying was reported in Manchester and Bradford. (Being able to prove whom you have voted for, such as by showing the ballot you are mailing in, enables vote buying.) What Must Be Done The universal adoption of perfect voting machines will not be happening anytime soon. But quite independent of the specific machines used, much can and should be done simply to ensure that votes are collected and accurately counted in the U.S. We must be adamant about the following improvements: 1. We must simplify the registration system. The largest loss of votes in 2000 occurred because errors in registration databases prevented people from voting. Registration databases must be properly checked to make sure they include all eligible people who want to be registered. We must develop national standards and technology to ensure that people can register reliably but that they do not register and vote in multiple places. 2. Local election officials must understand the operation of their equipment and test its performance thoroughly when it is delivered and before each election. DREs should be tested on election day, using dummy precincts. 3. Local election officials must teach their workers using simple procedures to run the equipment and other processes. Ballot making, marking, collecting and counting all must be carefully set up to avoid error and fraud. Many voting officials inadvertently use procedures that compromise accuracy, security and integrity of ballots by, for example, turning off precinct scanning machines that check for overvotes and inspecting and "correcting" ballots. 4. Each step in the voting process must be resistant to tampering. Collecting, counting and storing of ballots must be done with documentation of who touches everything and with clear procedures for what to do with the materials at each stage. Multiple people must oversee all critical processes. 5. Each task in the voting process must be clear and accessible, have helpful feedback and allow a person to validate it. Perceptual, cognitive, motor and social capabilities of people must be taken into account when designing machines and ballots. Ballot designs should pass usability and countability tests before being shown for final approval to the parties invested in the election. Voters must be able to understand how to make their selections, and votes must be easy to count in mass quantities. 6. The government should invest in research to develop and test secure voting technology, including DREs and Internet voting. Rushing to adopt present-day voting machines is not the best use of funds in the long term. 7. Standards of ethics must be set and enforced for all poll workers and also for voting companies regarding investments in them and donations by them or their executives. Only when these requirements are met will we have a truly secure and accurate voting system, no matter what underlying technology is used. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Spotting the Airline Terror Threat
by R. A. Hettinga 03 Oct '04

03 Oct '04

Wherein the TSA thinks they can observe a lot by watching... Cheers, RAH ------- <http://www.time.com/time/nation/printout/0,8816,708924,00.html> Saturday, Oct. 02, 2004 Spotting the Airline Terror Threat TIME exclusive: A new airport security system soon to be tested will rely on human judgment By SALLY B. DONNELLY/WASHINGTON TIME exclusive: A new airport security system soon to be tested will rely on human judgment The most dangerous threat to commercial aviation is not so much the things bad people may be carrying, but the bad people themselves. That refrain heard constantly from airline security experts over the past three years appears to have finally been heeded by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Aviation sources tell TIME that the TSA plans to address the problem by launching its own passenger profiling system. The system known as SPOT (Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques) relies more on the human dimension in detecting threats, and is to be tested at two northeastern airports starting later this month. "This is a radical change to aviation security," says Sgt. Peter DiDomenica, the Massachusetts State Police officer who developed the racially-neutral profiling program in place at Boston's Logan Airport, on which SPOT is based. "This is a very subtle but very effective program." Unlike the TSA's recently announced program to use computer databases to scan for suspicious individuals whose names occur on passenger lists, SPOT is instead based squarely on the human element: the ability of TSA employees to identify suspicious individuals by using the principles of surveillance and detection. Passengers who flag concerns by exhibiting unusual or anxious behavior will be pointed out to local police, who will then conduct face-to-face interviews to determine whether any threat exists. If such inquiries turn up other issues of concern, such as travel to countries like Afghanistan, Iraq or Sudan, for example, police officers will know to pursue the questioning or alert Federal counter-terrorism agents. DiDomenica has first-hand experience of the effectiveness of the system. He was using his own observation techniques - called BASS (Behavior Assessment Screening System) - last year when he saw man acting oddly near the checkpoint and stopped him. The suspect passenger turned out to be an agent from the Department of Homeland Security who had been trying to test the system by sneaking a prohibited device onto a plane. Although the profiling programs are aimed primarily at stopping terrorists, they have had other benefits. The Massachusetts State Police have arrested about 20 people for infractions ranging from being in the country illegally to failing to answer outstanding warrants for various offenses. The TSA plans to test SPOT for 60 days before committing to taking it nationwide, eventually to all of the country's 429 commercial airports. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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RE: QC Hype Watch: Quantum cryptography gets practical
by Tyler Durden 02 Oct '04

02 Oct '04

Yes, I am indeed a little suspicious. Clearly, this "quantum repeater" can't be doing an O/E, or no amount of hype will budge this product an inch. Quantum Crypto utilizes pairs of correlated photons, so we can't be talking about an optical amplifer. So since I've been away from the literature for a while, is there a device that can repair a deteriorating, about-to-be-collapsed superposition state? I can't see how this could occur without the requirement of acting on the other (correlated) photon either, and if that photon is physically removed from the first, then forget about it. (Though theoretically I think I can conceive of the possibility of two "correlated quantum repeaters" exchanging 'information' (including gating) about the photon pair they are collectively handling*, but no way that can be useful commerically.) *: This isn't quite as farfetched as it seems: Even 5 to 10 years ago it was shown that there can be quantum Forward Error Correction, and simple devices were demonstrated in the laboratory. -TD >From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart(a)pobox.com> >To: "Tyler Durden" <camera_lumina(a)hotmail.com> >CC: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net, rah(a)shipwright.com >Subject: RE: QC Hype Watch: Quantum cryptography gets practical >Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 11:59:40 -0700 > >At 05:12 PM 9/30/2004, Tyler Durden wrote: > >>What's a "quantum repeater" in this context? > >It's also known as a "wiretap insertion point"... > > > As for "Hype Watch", I tend to agree, but I also believe that Gelfond > > (who I spoke to last year) actually does have a 'viable' system. > > Commerically viable is another thing entirely, however. > >"Practical" implies that there's a crossover point between >cost and benefit and that implementation is on the "benefit" side. > >Implementation may now be possible, and the costs may be lower >than their previous infinite value, but the main benefits I see are >public relations hype to impress the rubes and protect against >zero-day exploits against Diffie-Hellman or Cisco IOS. >But you could protect against the Cisco exploits just as easily >with a conventional-key encryption hardware box, >and you wouldn't need contiguous fiber. _________________________________________________________________ Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee. Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963

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Nightclub you'll want to skip - RFID microchipping the guests [BBC article]
by Bill Stewart 02 Oct '04

02 Oct '04

Here's a nightclub you'll want to skip, unless you feel like hacking RFIDs... ("Nothing up my sleeve but this Rivest RFID Blocker!") ** Barcelona clubbers get chipped ** Some clubbers in Barcelona have opted to have a microchip implanted which lets them pay for drinks. < http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/technology/3697940.stm > BBC Science producer Simon Morton goes clubbing in Barcelona with a microchip implanted in his arm to pay for drinks. Imagine having a glass capsule measuring 1.3mm by 1mm, about the size of a large grain of rice injected under your skin. Implanting microchips that emit a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) into animals has been common practice in many countries around the world, with some looking to make it a legal requirement for domestic pet owners. The idea of having my very own microchip implanted in my body appealed. I have always been an early adopter, so why not. Last week I headed for the bright lights of the Catalan city of Barcelona to enter the exclusive VIP Baja Beach Club. The night club offers its VIP clients the opportunity to have a syringe-injected microchip implanted in their upper arms that not only gives them special access to VIP lounges, but also acts as a debit account from which they can pay for drinks. This sort of thing is handy for a beach club where bikinis and board shorts are the uniform and carrying a wallet or purse is really not practical. Thumping heart I met the owner of the club, Conrad Chase, who had come up with the idea when trying to develop the ultimate in membership cards and was the first person implanted with the capsule, made by VeriChip Corporation. With a waiver in his hand Conrad asked me to sign my life away, confirming that if I wanted the chip removed it was my responsibility. Four aspiring VIP members sat quietly sipping their beverages as the nurse Laia began preparing the surgical materials. Like a scene from a sci-fi movie, latex gloves and syringes were laid out on the table as the DJ played loud dance tunes that made my heart thump, or was it just fear? Questions were going through my mind. Would it hurt? What are the risks? What if I want to get it out? I ordered another drink. Comfortably numb Laia started by disinfecting my upper arm and then administered a local anaesthetic to numb the area where the chip would be implanted. With the large needle in her hand, she tested the zone which made me flinch and led to another dose of the anaesthetic. With a numb arm, Laia held up the rather large needle containing the microchip and inserted it beneath the layer of skin and fat on my arm. She pressed the injector and it was in - my very own 10 digit number safely located in my body. The chip is made of glass and is inert so there is no risk of it reacting with my body. It sits dormant under the skin sending out a very low range radio frequency so it will not set off airport security systems. The chip responds to a signal when a scanner is held near it and supplies its own unique ID number. The number can then be linked to a database that is linked to other data, at the Baja beach club it make charges to a customers account. If I want to leave the club then I can have it surgically removed - a pretty simple procedure similar to having it put in. Now, the question of did it hurt. Having the chip inserted was a breeze, no real pain to report of. The real pain was the sore head the following day after a night on an open bar tab. You can hear more about Simon's experiences on the BBC World Service programme Go Digital Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/3697940.stm Published: 2004/09/29 08:17:45 GMT ) BBC MMIV

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RE: QC Hype Watch: Quantum cryptography gets practical
by Tyler Durden 02 Oct '04

02 Oct '04

What's a "quantum repeater" in this context? As for "Hype Watch", I tend to agree, but I also believe that Gelfond (who I spoke to last year) actually does have a 'viable' system. Commerically viable is another thing entirely, however. -TD >From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> >To: cryptography(a)metzdowd.com, cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: QC Hype Watch: Quantum cryptography gets practical >Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 17:39:24 -0400 > ><http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2004/0,4814,96111,00.html> > > - Computerworld > > > Quantum cryptography gets practical > > Opinion by Bob Gelfond, MagiQ Technologies Inc. > > > > > > SEPTEMBER 30, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - In theory and in labs, quantum >cryptography -- cryptography based on the laws of physics rather than >traditional, computational difficulty -- has been around for years. >Advancements in science and in the world's telecommunications >infrastructure, however, have led to the commercialization of this >technology and its practical application in industries where high-value >assets must be secure. > > Protecting information today usually involves the use of a cryptographic >protocol where sensitive information is encrypted into a form that would be >unreadable by anyone without a "key." For this system to work effectively, >the key must be absolutely random and kept secret from everyone except the >communicating parties. It must also be refreshed regularly to keep the >communications channel safe. The challenge resides in the techniques used >for the encryption and distribution of this key to its intended parties to >avoid any interception of the key or any eavesdropping by a third party. > > Many organizations are advancing quantum technology and bringing it >outside academia. Research labs, private companies, international alliances >such as the European Union and agencies such as the Defense Advanced >Research Projects Agency are investing tens of millions of dollars in >quantum research, with projects specifically focused on the challenge of >key distribution. > > The trouble with key distribution > >Huge investment in the late 1990s through 2001 created a vast >telecommunications infrastructure resulting in millions of miles of optical >fiber laid across the country and throughout buildings to enable high-speed >communications. This revolution combined a heavy reliance on fiber-optic >infrastructure with the use of open network protocols such as Ethernet and >IP to help systems communicate. > > Although this investment delivers increased productivity, dependence on >optical fiber compounds key distribution challenges because of the relative >ease with which optical taps can be used. With thousands of photons >representing each bit of data traveling over fiber, nonintrusive, low-cost >optical taps placed anywhere along the fiber can siphon off enough data >without degrading the signal to cause a security breach. The threat profile >is particularly high where clusters of telecommunications gear are found in >closets, the basements of parking garages or central offices. Data can be >tapped through monitoring jacks on this equipment with inexpensive handheld >devices. This enables data to be compromised without eavesdroppers >disclosing themselves to the communicating parties. > > Another important aspect of this problem is the refresh rate of the keys. >Taking large systems off-line to refresh keys can cause considerable >headaches, such as halting business operations and creating other security >threats. Therefore, many traditional key-distribution systems refresh keys >less than once per year. Infrequent key refreshing is detrimental to the >security of a system because it makes brute-force attacks much easier and >can thereby provide an eavesdropper with full access to encrypted >information until the compromised key is refreshed. > > Adding quantum physics to the key distribution equation > >Companies are now in a position to use advancements in quantum >cryptography, such as quantum key distribution (QKD) systems, to secure >their most valued information. Two factors have made this possible: the >vast stretches of optical fiber (lit and dark) laid in metropolitan areas, >and the decreasing cost in recent years of components necessary for >producing QKD systems as a result of the over-investment in >telecommunications during the early 2000s. > > Based on the laws of quantum mechanics, the keys generated and >disseminated using QKD systems have proved to be absolutely random and >secure. Keys are encoded on a photon-by-photon basis, and quantum mechanics >guarantees that the act of an eavesdropper intercepting a photon will >irretrievably change the information encoded on that photon. Therefore, the >eavesdropper can't copy or read the photon -- or the information encoded on >it -- without modifying it, which makes it possible to detect the security >breach. In addition to mitigating the threat of optical taps, QKD systems >are able to refresh keys at a rate of up to 10 times per second, further >increasing the level of security of the encrypted data. > > Not for everyone > >Quantum key distribution systems aren't intended for everyday use: You >won't find a QKD system in the home office anytime soon. One reason is that >a QKD system requires a dedicated fiber-optic line. Also, because the loss >of photons over longer distances, these systems have current distance >limitations of approximately 120 kilometers (nearly 75 miles) which is >common with optical infrastructure equipment. Quantum repeaters are under >development to extend that range much farther. Finally, the end points of >these QKD systems must reside in secure locations. However, since they are >tamper-proof, if attempts are made to compromise them, they will stop >running or fire off an alarm, thus ensuring ultimate information >protection. > > The practical development of QKD systems has made them applicable for a >number of industries such as financial services, biotech and >telecommunications along with government sectors such as intelligence and >the military. They don't require a physicist or an engineer to administer >them. These appliances fit in standard racks, plug into existing networks, >and are reliable around the clock. QKD systems interoperate with security >standards such as IPsec-based VPNs providing an added layer of security to >networks. > > Ask the right questions > >As you look for better ways to protect your company's most important >information, QKD may be an option. However, be sure you understand the >strengths and drawbacks of quantum key distribution by asking the right >questions: > > 1. What does your organization's security policy say about the >threat profile for high-value assets? > > 2. How frequently are your encryption keys changed and by what method? > > 3. What is the total cost of ownership for QKD products? Are there >additional costs in support and training? > > 4. Are your competitors implementing QKD systems? > > 5. What infrastructure requirements must be met? > > 6. What personnel/staffing levels are required? > > 7. How does this QKD system work with existing cryptography systems? > > 8. What are the distance limitations of this system? > >QKD isn't an everyday desktop tool, but the technology makes sense for >those organizations that have the resources and the capacity to use it >effectively. > > Bob Gelfond is founder and CEO of MagiQ Technologies Inc., a vendor of >quantum information processing services and products in New York. > > > > > > > > > >Additional Content > > White Papers > > > Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell >hardware, software and services. > > >View all whitepapers >Research Report > > This IDC white paper demonstrates growth in value of distributed >applications accessed over the Web, especially for eCommerce applications, >and analyses the requirements needed for performance management of >distributed applications in today's complex heterogeneous environments. > Distributed Applications Performance Management: The VERITAS i3 Approach > > >Featured Webcast > > >Network Computing Web Event > See the latest innovations, including Sun servers and workstations based >on AMD Opteron[tm], new Sun StorEdge[tm] solutions, and breakthrough >technologies in Solaris[tm] 10. > > > > > >Sponsored Links > >A smart plan for assuring application quality: New webcast from >Compuware >Distributed Applications Performance Management: The VERITAS i3 Approach > Download this free white paper from IDC > > > >Enterprise Solutions for Federal Government An IT infrastructure starts >with robust technology. > > > > >The IP migration A wake-up call > > > >Enterprise Grid Alliance Helping make grid computing work for you > >About Us Contacts Editorial Calendar Help Desk Advertise Privacy Policy > > > > > > > > Copyright ) 2004 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in >whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission >of Computerworld Inc. is prohibited. Computerworld and Computerworld.com >and the respective logos are trademarks of International Data Group Inc. > > > > >-- >----------------- >R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> >The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> >44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA >"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, >[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to >experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/

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Effort to Create Terror Watch List Is Falling Behind, Report Finds
by R. A. Hettinga 01 Oct '04

01 Oct '04

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB109658864511433243,00.html> The Wall Street Journal October 1, 2004 PAGE ONE Effort to Create Terror Watch List Is Falling Behind, Report Finds By ROBERT BLOCK and GARY FIELDS Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL October 1, 2004; Page A1 A government report concludes that efforts to protect U.S. borders and better identify terrorist suspects by compiling a single consolidated watch list -- from more than a dozen currently in use by federal agencies -- have badly foundered. The inspector general of the Homeland Security Department, in the sometimes scathing report, cites poor cooperation among many agencies and says his own agency failed "to play a lead role" in oversight. The report has been delivered to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and congressional leaders. Compiling a viable, unified list of terrorist suspects was mandated by Congress and ordered by President Bush after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Such a list is considered by law-enforcement agents as the most basic tool in their arsenal and vital for protecting the country. But now dozens of agencies, from the Federal Aviation Administration to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, continue to use different lists that sometimes contain outdated or incorrect information and even contradict each other. That can hamper the sharing of vital data and identifying of suspects -- and make it easier for terrorists to slip through cracks in the system, officials say. "The watch list is the poster child for information sharing for all our intelligence and government agencies," said Daniel B. Prieto, research director for the Homeland Security Partnership Initiative at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. "It has been the one project that is the most straightforward; the most defined, the most politically accepted idea, supported by every investigative commission since 9/11. If they can't get this one right, then shame on them." Mr. Prieto is a former Democratic congressional staffer who monitored the watch-list issue. An edited version of the inspector general's report is to be publicly released on Sunday. A copy was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The findings come amid an intense debate about improving intelligence in the wake of the 9/11 Commission's damning findings about government failures before and after the Sept. 11 attacks. Congress is wrestling over the creation of a new intelligence czar to better coordinate government counterterrorism efforts. Intelligence changes also have become a campaign issue, with the Bush administration asserting it has dramatically improved information-sharing among law-enforcement agencies. In the first presidential debate last night, Sen. John Kerry said the president had failed to support police, firefighters and other programs, saying, "This president thought it was more important to give the wealthiest people in America a tax cut rather than invest in homeland security. Those aren't my values. I believe in protecting America first." REPORT EXCERPTS Below is an excerpt of the draft report to be issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General on challenges in consolidating terrorist watch list information. Results in Brief DHS is not playing a lead role in consolidating terrorist watch list information. Instead, these consolidation activities are generally administered by the entities that were responsible for collecting and disseminating terrorist information prior to DHS's formation. DHS officials said that the new department lacked the resources and infrastructure to assume leadership for the consolidation. While this contention has merit, DHS can still play a more robust role than at present by overseeing and coordinating watch list consolidation activities across agency lines. Such oversight would help DHS fulfill the role required by the Homeland Security Act and better ensure that the past ad hoc approach to managing watch list consolidation is not continued. Stronger DHS leadership and oversight would also help improve current watch list consolidation efforts. Although some progress toward streamlined processes and enhanced interagency information sharing has been made, the consolidation is hampered by a number of issues that have not been coordinated effectively among interagency participants. Specifically, in the absence of central leadership and oversight for the watch list consolidation, planning, budgeting, staffing, and requirements definition continue to be dealt with on an ad hoc basis, posing a risk to successful accomplishment of the goal. A number of additional challenges, such as identifying links between violent criminals and terrorism, privacy, and duplicative federal activities related to watch list programs, could be pursued in the context of a centrally coordinated approach to watch list management. In response, the president said his administration had tripled spending on homeland security to $30 billion, worked with Congress to create the Homeland Security Department and added protection and guards to the nation's borders. "We're doing our duty to provide the funding," he said. In reference to American military action overseas, he added, "But the best way to protect this homeland is to stay on the offense." (See a related article3.) The inspector general's report notes that arguments over who is in charge of consolidating a terrorist database have dogged the creation of the watch list almost from the start. "While the requirement to consolidate the multiple watch lists was clear," it says, "the approach to accomplish it has not been so. Responsibility for consolidating multiple databases of watch lists has shifted among various federal organizations..." It further notes, "The manner through which the watch list consolidation has unfolded has not helped the nation break from its pattern of ad hoc approaches to counterterrorism." Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin says the law creating Homeland Security in 2002 gave the agency prime authority in the matter, and that subsequent presidential decrees, including one creating a Terrorist Screening Center under the FBI's purview, supplement, rather than supplant, the agency's authority. But a department spokesman rejects that conclusion, saying that the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation have the primary responsibility for creating the watch list, not Homeland Security. "It's the FBI that is charged with the lead role, not us," said Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roherkasse. The FBI declined to comment. The report also states that a number of organizations involved in the watch-list consolidation were "conducting a number of data mining activities without central oversight" to make sure they were not violating any policies or laws governing personal privacy. Data mining, or the analysis of large amounts of commercial and other data to extract new kinds of information useful to law enforcement, is very controversial and opposed by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union. Mr. Ervin, a Texas Republican who is known for his unfailing politeness, came to Homeland Security from the State Department, where he served the same role after following President Bush to Washington in 2001. Mr. Ervin also worked in the White House from 1989 to 1991 under President George H.W. Bush. Mr. Ervin has issued several reports criticizing various efforts at Homeland Security. Last week, he released one on Transportation Security Administration screeners that found they did a poor job finding guns, knives and potential bombs smuggled through security checkpoints by covert testing from July to November 2003. A White House spokesman said the president appointed Mr. Ervin and appreciates his service. Law-enforcement agencies have long considered the creation of automated information or "watch lists" of potential or known terrorists and criminals as a vital tool to help protect the country. Names on the list are checked against the names of foreign nationals attempting to enter or already present in the U.S. The government's need for a unified, accurate and meaningful terrorist list first surfaced after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Investigators learned that two of the bombers, Sheik Rahman and Ali Mohammed, were on an FBI watch list but still got visas because the State Department and the old Immigration and Naturalization Service didn't have access to FBI data. After Sept. 11, a single watch list was considered vital to keeping terrorists from gaining access to the U.S. as well as to coordinate the fight against al Qaeda. But in April 2003, the investigative arm of Congress, the General Accounting Office, now known as the General Accountability Office, found that efforts to create such a list were going nowhere and said that the lack of a single master list was constraining efforts to protect and control U.S. borders. Part of the problem has been confusion over whose job it is to take the lead. In his 2003 State of the Union speech, President Bush called for the creation of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. The effort was meant to unite the heads of the FBI, Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense in developing a single entity for merging, analyzing and disseminating terrorist-threat information. The Threat Center, which answers to the director of the CIA, opened on May 1, 2003, two months after the Department of Homeland Security opened its doors. Less than five months later, on Sept. 16, 2003, Mr. Bush signed a directive calling for the creation of another body, the TSC, to take the work of the Threat Center and other government departments with terrorist information and produce a unified database that could be accessed and shared by all law-enforcement officials in the nation, from border guards in Arizona to detectives in New York City. Mr. Ridge, Secretary of State Colin Powell, then-CIA director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft signed a memorandum of understanding that the TSC would be run by the FBI and use the State Department's terrorist watch list as the backbone of a new database that would integrate all other existing data. TSC operatives would supposedly weed out duplications and obsolete data and remove people who in the past had been wrongly identified as terrorists or who had shared the same name as suspects. The TSC also was to work with new technologies to include identifying features such as fingerprints, distinguishing scars and birthmarks, as well as credit-card accounts and other data, to distinguish real suspects from others. The inspector general's report states that there has been some progress in the effort, noting that as of March 12, 2004, the database contains more than 100,000 names. It also says that the TSC has brought together representatives from the FBI, State Department, Homeland Security, Secret Service, Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection to help in consolidating the information into a form useful to share with law enforcement. However, the report finds there also have been problems in creating a technological system that meets the competing requirements of the different agencies contributing information. The head of the terrorist screening center, Donna Bucella, reported to Congress earlier this year that she was having problems getting some agencies, particularly at the Department of Defense, to provide the screening center with its terrorist information. The reason, in part, was that they were not satisfied with the security of the screening center's computer system. An FBI official familiar with the continuing problems over the Terrorist Screening Center and the consolidation of a terror watch list said there continues to be compatibility problems with the various databases the FBI is trying bring together. Some issues revolve around various computer systems being unable to communicate electronically. Other problems arise because of different criteria for placing someone on the list in the first place. The report comes on the heels of several high-profile snafus caused by proliferating watch lists. British singer Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, recently was stopped from traveling in the U.S. because his name was on one list -- but not the Transport Security Administration's official "No-Fly List." Similarly, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, Mass.) and Rep. Don Young (R., Alaska) have said they at times have been mistaken for terrorists at airline counters because of namesakes on the watch list. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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How small towns are reversing a century of corporate personhood
by R. A. Hettinga 01 Oct '04

01 Oct '04

Mopping off the leftist drivel from the facts below, :-), the idea of abolishing the personhood of corporations, as a step towards freeing enterprise from the claws of the state, is a very attractive idea. A limited partnership can get the same results, without the "artifical person" nonsense. Financial cryptography actually has solutions in this regard, of course, with bearer equity, anonymous voting, m-of-n key sharing, etc. By way of a Google cache. Sue me. Cheers, RAH ------- <http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:vfcFKfyJ3qYJ:www.sevendaysvt.com/-this…> This is G o o g l e's cache of http://www.sevendaysvt.com/-thisweek/feat/03.html as retrieved on Sep 24, 2004 15:51:22 GMT. G o o g l e's cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the web. The page may have changed since that time. Click here for the current page without highlighting. This cached page may reference images which are no longer available. Click here for the cached text only. To link to or bookmark this page, use the following url: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:vfcFKfyJ3qYJ:www.sevendaysvt.com/-this… Google is not affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content. These search terms have been highlighted: seven days newspaper bad company b v Bad Company? How small towns are teversing a century of corporate personhood STORY: KEN PICARD Tom Linzey speaks at Vermont Law School, South Royalton, Thursday, September 30 at 12:45 & 7 p.m. Image: Tim Newcomb Porter Township in northwestern Pennsyl-vania was an unlikely hotbed for an anti-corporate uprising. The tiny rural community about an hour north of Pittsburgh has a population of only 1500 people, many of whom are staunch Republicans with deeply-held conservative values. But after the Alcosan Corporation, a Pennsylvania sewage-sludge hauler, threatened to sue Porter Township in 2002 for passing a local ordinance regulating the dumping of sludge in their community, town officials decided that their citizens had taken enough crap from corporations. Literally. So on December 9, 2002, Porter became the first municipality in the United States to pass a law denying corporations their rights as "persons" under the law. Weeks later, Licking Township, another rural Pennsylvania community facing a similar lawsuit, passed a more expansive ordinance revoking all constitutional rights of corporations within their jurisdiction. Since then, dozens of other municipalities across Pennsylvania, some with as few as 1000 residents, have followed suit, reversing nearly 120 years of corporate encroachment on the rights guaranteed to all citizens under the U.S. Constitution. Prompted by the failure of state and federal regulatory agencies to protect citizens' health, safety and quality of life from large-scale corporate activities, these municipalities took matters into their own hands and reclaimed their right of self-rule. Though the laws fly in the face of more than a century's worth of legal precedents that say corporations are "persons" protected by the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment, thus far these ordinances seem to be working. Now some Vermonters are looking to follow Pennsylvania's example and draft similar ordinances here to address environmental and public-health problems stemming from large corporate activities: the influx of big-box stores, the spreading of toxic sludge, even the proposed power increase at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. Proponents of this strategy suggest that these laws may even be used one day to challenge undemocratic principles that were written into the World Trade Organization charter and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Championing this fight is Tom Linzey, a 35-year-old Alabama-born attorney who is the executive director and co-founder of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. Founded in 1995, the Pennsylvania-based CELDF was initially set up to provide free legal services to small community groups that were fighting big environmental battles: toxic-waste incinerators, landfills, municipal sludge fields and corporate factory farms. Since then, however, the nonprofit law firm has expanded its mission to help municipalities around the country roll back corporate rights through local ordinances. CELDF conducts "democracy schools" - intensive, weekend-long seminars that trace the history of corporate rights and help citizens reframe local issues according to a new paradigm. Once such democracy school was held two weeks ago in Putney for 20 Vermonters from the Brattleboro area. Linzey, who speaks on September 30 at Vermont Law School, explained in a recent interview how this movement began. In the mid- to late-1990s, large out-of-state agribusinesses began applying for permits to build large-scale hog farms in rural Pennsylvania. Local residents, who overwhelmingly opposed these farming operations, sought the help of state and federal regulatory agencies like the EPA. However, these communities soon realized that waging their battle on the regulatory front wouldn't stop undesirable businesses from moving into town - it would merely lessen the harm those activities caused. The proposed factory farms were huge operations - 5000- to 6000-head hog farms - that would dwarf neighboring family farms. Before long, CELDF was inundated with phone calls from local officials across Pennsyl-vania - some 400 townships in all - seeking their help at fending off these corporate farms. So CELDF began researching how this issue had been handled in other states, particularly in the Midwest, where 300,000- to 400,000-head hog farms are common. This was when Linzey made a startling discovery: Nine Midwestern states have laws banning large corporations from owning or controlling farms. In fact, Nebraska and South Dakota went so far as to incorporate that ban into their state constitutions. So CELDF copied the South Dakota constitutional amendment and used it as a model for local ordinances. Ten townships and five counties in Pennsylvania have adopted the anti-corporate farming ordinance. To date, only one has been overturned by the courts. During this same period in the 1990s, CELDF also began receiving calls from community groups and local officials who were trying to stop the permitting of sludge fields. Sludge, the solid-waste byproduct of wastewater treatment plants, is not considered a "hazardous waste" by the federal government. Although it can contain as many as 600,000 different toxic contaminants, the U.S. Environ-mental Protection Agency requires testing for only 11 of those contaminants. Spreading sludge on farmland, a practice known as "biosolid land application," was already a controversial issue in rural Pennsylvania because of its impact on human and animal health. In 1995, two youths died after coming into contact with a newly applied sludge field. In an effort to prevent more sludge from being dumped in their communities, 68 Pennsylvania townships passed anti-sludge ordinances. The corporate waste haulers didn't take these ordinances lying down. They challenged the laws in court, arguing that townships were denying them their constitutional rights and didn't have the legal authority to pass these laws. The corporations also tried to hold town officials personally liable for passing these laws. They based their argument on a federal civil rights law that was passed in the aftermath of the Civil War in orders to protect African-Ameri-cans from state-sanctioned discrimination. Since these corporate sludge haulers had deep pockets, it wasn't even necessary that they win in court. All they had to do was deplete a town's financial resources by waging a long and costly legal battle. How did CELDF respond? As Linzey explains, CELDF helped Porter and Licking townships draft a "Corporate Rights Elimination Ordinance," which effectively stripped the corporation of its right to sue. Though these laws were an unprecedented challenge to corporate empowerment, they remain in effect today and have yet to be challenged in court. "Corporate rights sometimes get talked about as some academic or abstract concept like something that's taught in a college political science class," Linzey says. "Here, what folks have said is that our vision for our community does not include land-applied sludge. It does not include factory farms. And that's the community we want." Critics were quick to label the movement the work of liberal, anti-business activists. But as Linzey points out, about 80 percent of the communities he works with are overwhelmingly conservative and Republican. "Keep in mind, these are rural township officials with the shit-kicker boots and the John Deere hats. These are the guys who clear and salt the roads in the wintertime," he says. "These are not activists. They are folks who saw a problem and tried to do something about it." How effective have the ordinances been? Very, says Linzey. "In the 68 townships that have passed sludge ordinances, not one new teaspoon of sludge has been land-applied," he says. The same holds true for the ban on corporate hog farms. In the 10 townships that passed anti-corporate farm ordinances, Linzey says, not one new corporate hog farm has been established, even though those areas were targeted for more factory farms. Vermont is no stranger to the legal perversion of corporate "personhood." In April 1994, the Vermont Legislature passed the nation's first law requiring the labeling of dairy products containing the genetically altered growth hormone, rBGH. In response, agribusiness giant Monsanto and a coalition of dairy-industry groups sued the state, asserting that the law was unconstitutional. A federal judge agreed, ruling that the new law violated Monsanto's First Amendment right "not to speak." Several weeks ago, 20 people from southern Vermont spent a weekend at Landmark College in Putney, attending one of CELDF's democracy schools. Among them was Larry Bloch, a small-business owner from Brat-tleboro who is with Vermonters Restoring Democracy. It's an umbrella organization of groups that deal with issues ranging from genetically modified organisms to nuclear power to social and economic justice. Though its members come from a variety of political backgrounds, what unites them, Bloch explains, is a desire to combat corporate dominance over local decision-making. "When a predatory corporation comes in and says, 'We're moving in no matter what and we don't care if we push out your independently owned local businesses,' that doesn't affect only progressives or only conservatives," Bloch says. "To hear the stories from Pennsylvania was inspiring because these were people who had never been activists and weren't blessed with a lot of free time or money or the inclination to shake things up." Representative Sarah Edwards (P-Brattleboro) agrees. Edwards, who also attended the democracy school, says the seminar helped reframe the debate in her mind, especially on the issue of nuclear power. "It's helping me to know who my adversary is," Edwards says. "I'm not talking about individuals. I'm talking about the corporations. "I have friends who work at [Vermont] Yankee. I know management who work at Yankee," she adds. "This is not about them. This is about the system, the machine of the corporation squeezing out the diversity of voices that is necessary to have a good and healthy democracy. Democracy schools already have been held in six states. By next year, there will be five permanent "Daniel Pennock Democracy Schools" - named for one of the two boys who died after coming into contact with the toxic sludge. In the past, these schools have largely addressed environmental issues. But that's charging, Linzey notes. Activists in Roxbury, Massa-chusetts, for example, hope the Pennsylvania model can be used to challenge the pharmaceutical industry on its policies pertaining to AIDS drugs. Others see the approach as a way to counter international agreements like NAFTA. John Berkowitz is executive director of Southern Vermonters for a Fair Economy and Environmental Protection. He points to a law passed in Massachusetts 10 years ago that prohibited municipalities from signing contracts with companies that do business with Burma - a country with an abysmal human rights record. After Japan and the European Union filed a complaint about the law with the WTO, in 1997 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Massachusetts laws as unconstitutional. "Wait a minute. Who's deciding what's best for a community?" Berkowitz asks. "Is it absentee corporations and people working for trade organizations like the WTO? We're finding that people's local decision-making abilities are being trumped by trade agreements that basically say, 'You can't decide that at the local level.'" But as Linzey reminds people who attend CELDF's democracy schools, local communities can reclaim the power of self-rule. Like hurricanes that feed off warmer waters, the anti-corporate movement draws strength through legal provocation. Says Linzey, "This is about shifting the paradigm to let people understand that the courts do step in to defend community rights over corporate rights." ) Seven Days Newspaper, 2004 www.sevendaysvt.com web queries? d -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Suit complicates First Data's move to cut porn tie
by R. A. Hettinga 01 Oct '04

01 Oct '04

<http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~2438413,00.html> DenverPost.com - BUSINESS Friday, October 1, 2004 Denver, CO Article Published: Friday, October 01, 2004 Suit complicates First Data's move to cut porn tie By Aldo Svaldi Denver Post Staff Writer First Data Corp. says it has sworn off porn, but a lawsuit could complicate the Greenwood Village company's efforts to cut its ties to the lucrative industry. First Data stopped payment processing for Internet Billing Co. after its contract with First Data expired Sept. 15. Internet Billing is a Florida company that Forbes.com describes as one of the country's largest middlemen between Internet porn sites and banks. "First Data regularly evaluates its lines of business to ensure they are a good fit for the company," the company said in a statement. "We have determined that processing payments of the adult entertainment marketplace is inconsistent with our core values." Internet Billing, also known as iBill, filed a lawsuit two days later against the company and asked a New York state court to force First Data to work with it until it could switch to a new processor in November. The court denied iBill's request. Internet Billing did not respond to an interview request. Penthouse International purchased the company in March for $23.5 million. First Data, which in the past has kept its involvement with the adult entertainment industry quiet, said it had given iBill plenty of notice the contract was ending. "First Data provided iBill with multiple notices that its contract would not be extended after expiration," the company said. First Data has been terminating all of its contracts with adult entertainment providers as they expire, a spokeswoman said. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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'Frustrated' U.S. Cybersecurity Chief Abruptly Resigns
by R. A. Hettinga 01 Oct '04

01 Oct '04

<http://www.local6.com/print/3776699/detail.html?use=print> local6.com 'Frustrated' U.S. Cybersecurity Chief Abruptly Resigns POSTED: 11:32 AM EDT October 1, 2004 WASHINGTON -- The government's cybersecurity chief has abruptly resigned after one year with the Department of Homeland Security, confiding to industry colleagues his frustration over what he considers a lack of attention paid to computer security issues within the agency. Amit Yoran, a former software executive from Symantec Corp., informed the White House about his plans to quit as director of the National Cyber Security Division and made his resignation effective at the end of Thursday, effectively giving a single's day notice of his intentions to leave. Yoran said Friday he "felt the timing was right to pursue other opportunities." It was unclear immediately who might succeed him even temporarily. Yoran's deputy is Donald "Andy" Purdy, a former senior adviser to the White House on cybersecurity issues. Yoran has privately described frustrations in recent months to colleagues in the technology industry, according to lobbyists who recounted these conversations on condition they not be identified because the talks were personal. As cybersecurity chief, Yoran and his division - with an $80 million budget and 60 employees - were responsible for carrying out dozens of recommendations in the Bush administration's "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace," a set of proposals to better protect computer networks. Yoran's position as a director -- at least three steps beneath Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge -- has irritated the technology industry and even some lawmakers. They have pressed unsuccessfully in recent months to elevate Yoran's role to that of an assistant secretary, which could mean broader authority and more money for cybersecurity issues. "Amit's decision to step down is unfortunate and certainly will set back efforts until more leadership is demonstrated by the Department of Homeland Security to solve this problem," said Paul Kurtz, a former cybersecurity official on the White House National Security Council and now head of the Washington-based Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a trade group. Under Yoran, Homeland Security established an ambitious new cyber alert system, which sends urgent e-mails to subscribers about major virus outbreaks and other Internet attacks as they occur, along with detailed instructions to help computer users protect themselves. It also mapped the government's universe of connected electronic devices, the first step toward scanning them systematically for weaknesses that could be exploited by hackers or foreign governments. And it began routinely identifying U.S. computers and networks that were victims of break-ins. Yoran effectively replaced a position once held by Richard Clarke, a special adviser to President Bush, and Howard Schmidt, who succeeded Clarke but left government during the formation of the Department of Homeland Security to work as chief security officer at eBay Inc. Yoran cofounded Riptech Inc. of Alexandria, Va., in March 1998, which monitored government and corporate computers around the world with an elaborate sensor network to protect against attacks. He sold the firm in July 2002 to Symantec for $145 million and stayed on as vice president for managed security services. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: Federal program to monitor everyone on the road
by hal＠finney.org 01 Oct '04

01 Oct '04

There was a brief mention of this technology at the Crypto conference. I provided some pointers in a comment to an Ed Felten blog entry at http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000677.html#comments (scroll down to the 3rd comment). Dan Boneh et al presented a proposal for a group signature scheme so that the data collected would not be personally identifiable. The problem is that the data needs to be authenticated, otherwise rogue transmitters could send false data and perhaps cause traffic flow problems or even serious accidents. So they want to use some cryptographic method. Putting a common key in the whole system would make it too easy for rogues to get access to, would be unrevocable, and we are back to the rogue transmitter problem. Using individual certified keys is the default solution but has privacy problems: everyone would be constantly transmitting a cryptographically verifiable record of their driving patterns, speed, lane changing and who knows what else. With the group signature, everybody has a unique key but their transmissions are not bound to that key. And if a key gets scraped out and goes rogue, it can be revoked. This is supposed to provide flexibility, authentication, and privacy. In practice I am skeptical that society will choose to protect privacy at the expense of security. One optional feature of group signatures is a trusted party who can penetrate the anonymity and learn the identity of the author of a particular message. I suspect that any vehicle based embedded communications system will retain that capability, a sort of "license plate" in the virtual realm. The ability to track the paths of bank robbers and terrorists would be too inviting for society to give up, especially if the data is only available to government agents. Hal

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